# Adversarial Review > Run an adversarial peer-review swarm on a paper draft, report, or manuscript by spawning parallel persona subagents (hostile theorist, experimentalist, statistician, journal editor, citation auditor, figure critic) and synthesizing their critiques into a ranked fix list with suggested defense experiments. Use when the user asks for a paper review, referee simulation, desk-reject check, pre-submission audit, citation audit, figure audit, novelty attack, or wants feedback on a draft report before submission or internal circulation. - Skill: `axect/adversarial-review` (Agent Skill, multi-file: 4 files) - Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add axect/adversarial-review` - Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/axect/adversarial-review/raw - Safety review: pending - Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex - Category: Security - Author: Axect (https://skillmd.com/u/axect) - Updated: 2026-09-17 - Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/axect/adversarial-review --- # Adversarial Review Use this skill to stress-test a draft before it reaches real reviewers. It spawns a small swarm of specialized persona subagents in parallel, each attacking the manuscript from one angle, then synthesizes the critiques into a prioritized fix list. This is the opposite of a friendly read-through. The goal is to surface desk-reject-level problems, unsupported claims, weak statistics, and citation hallucinations *before* submission — not to reassure the author. ## When to use - Pre-submission audit for a journal (PRX, JCAP, JOSS, etc.) or conference. - Internal circulation of a research report or technical memo. - Response drafting for a revise-and-resubmit where the author wants to predict reviewer pushback. - Any draft the user wants "torn apart" or "reviewed hard." If the user wants a friendly copy-edit pass, this is the wrong skill — suggest a plain editing request instead. ## Inputs to confirm Ask only for what is missing: - path to the draft (default: `report.md` in the current directory) - journal or venue the draft targets (affects the Journal Editor persona) - any sections the user wants emphasized or skipped - whether figures live alongside the draft and where (`plots/`, `figures/`, etc.) - whether a bibliography file or a references section should be audited - whether Korean translation of the final summary is expected If nothing is specified, default to: - draft: `report.md` in CWD - venue: "general physics/ML journal" (Journal Editor persona stays generic) - figures: `plots/` if present, else skip Figure Critic - Korean translation: no, unless the user previously asked ## Core workflow ### 1. Locate and stage inputs Before spawning any agents: - Read the draft once end-to-end to understand the claim structure. - Enumerate figure paths and bibliography entries. - Produce a compact **context packet** that every persona will receive: draft path, venue, figure list, bibliography location, and any sections to emphasize or skip. Do not let each persona re-read and re-summarize the whole draft from scratch — give them the packet plus the draft path. ### 2. Spawn personas in parallel Spawn the persona subagents using the Agent tool, **in a single message** so they run concurrently. Use `references/personas.md` for the exact persona briefs; each persona gets: - the context packet - its own persona brief (role, what to attack, what to ignore) - an output contract (see below) - an explicit length cap so critiques do not bloat Default persona set (skip any the draft does not support): 1. **Hostile Theorist** — attacks novelty; uses `reference-search` to surface prior art the draft may have missed. 2. **Experimentalist** — attacks reproducibility, missing ablations, undisclosed controls, hyperparameter sensitivity. 3. **Statistician** — attacks error bars, significance claims, baseline fairness, multiple-comparison exposure. 4. **Journal Editor** — predicts desk-reject reasons for the target venue; checks scope fit, framing, required sections. 5. **Citation Auditor** — verifies every non-trivial citation resolves to a real paper via `reference-search`; flags hallucinations and mischaracterizations. 6. **Figure Critic** — checks figure paths resolve, captions match the data, axes are consistent, cutoffs are applied uniformly, and no figure is referenced but missing. ### 3. Output contract (per persona) Every persona must return a markdown block with this exact structure so the meta-editor can merge them deterministically: ```markdown # ## Severity-classified findings - **DESK-REJECT**: — - **MAJOR**: — - **MINOR**: — ## Suggested defense / fix - ## Confidence — ``` Personas that find nothing at a severity level simply omit that bullet. Never fabricate findings to fill the template. ### 4. Meta-editor synthesis After all personas return, run the meta-editor pass described in `references/meta-editor.md`. It: - deduplicates overlapping critiques - ranks by severity (DESK-REJECT > MAJOR > MINOR) - attaches a proposed defense experiment or textual fix to every DESK-REJECT and MAJOR - drops low-confidence findings that no other persona corroborates Meta-editor output is the canonical `summary.md` the user reads first. ### 5. Write outputs Write all artifacts under `outputs/review//` relative to the draft's directory, with the stamp taken from `date +%Y%m%d_%H%M`. Alphabetical order then equals chronological order across repeated reviews. Keep individual persona files alongside the synthesis so the user can trace any claim in `summary.md` back to its source. ```text outputs/review/20260418_1430/ summary.md # meta-editor synthesis — read this first hostile_theorist.md experimentalist.md statistician.md journal_editor.md citation_auditor.md figure_critic.md context_packet.md # the packet given to every persona (for reproducibility) ``` ### 6. Report and stop Show the user the path to `summary.md`, the count of findings by severity, and the three highest-severity items inline. **Do not** start fixing the draft. The user decides which findings to act on. ## Integration See `references/integration.md` for how this skill wires into the rest of the collection: - `reference-search` is the citation and prior-art backbone for Hostile Theorist and Citation Auditor. - `research-report` produces the `report.md` and figure layout this skill consumes; reports that follow its conventions are easiest to review. - Korean translation of `summary.md` follows the user's standing convention when requested: a Sonnet subagent produces `summary_ko.md` next to the English file. ## Guardrails - Never modify the draft. This skill is read-only with respect to the manuscript. - Never silently skip a persona. If a persona cannot run (e.g. no figures to critique), say so in `summary.md` under "skipped". - Never accept a persona output that invents findings not grounded in the draft, figures, or bibliography. If a persona returns unsupported claims, rerun that persona once with an explicit "ground every finding in a section, figure, or citation pointer" instruction; if it fails again, mark its section as unreliable in `summary.md`. - Never fabricate a citation when checking citations. If `reference-search` returns nothing for a cited title, flag it as "not found via OpenAlex — manual verification required" rather than guessing. - Never push the review outputs. Writing under `outputs/review/...` is fine; git operations are out of scope. ## Resources - `references/personas.md` — the six persona briefs with role, attack surface, ignored concerns, and output contract. - `references/meta-editor.md` — dedup, severity ranking, and defense-experiment authoring rules. - `references/integration.md` — wiring notes for `reference-search`, `research-report`, and Korean translation.